I don't think either one had a really great year. But sure, luck and randomness can skew the results in a 30 game sample. It's not going to do that over 200 starts. Otherwise you could post the stats from a bunch of all-time greats with career losing records who got unlucky or lacked "run support". Those guys do not exist. And an 11-14 season is NEVER good. How could it be? If you're that good, you have to pitch better than the guys you're facing more often than not. I believe that was an absolutely terrible Sox offense that season though. In many of those games the average difference may have been approaching two runs and occasionally even more. That isn't going to be the case over any pitcher's career.

The guys you think are good are the guys who are good. And none of them have losing records for very long.

Based on what I have read since WINS is all that matters JORR is saying that Sale is having a better year than Kershaw.

Sale has more Wins 13 to 11

but in virtually all other stat categories traditional and sabremetric Kershaw is ahead IP,ERA,WAR,Strike outs, BA, WHIP, Fip and xFip.

So JORR is Sale having a better year than Kershaw?

Remember, sample size only becomes an issue when JORR's logic results in plainly silly stuff like this.

I think I have mentioned this before, but this is where you lose me. I don't disagree with your assertion that game context matters... in fact, I agree with it quite strongly. But if something can't be measured in a thirty-game sample, it's not great for predicting the future. Again, W/L is probably the best stat for measuring a career... but it's not a good predictor.

Yep... I'm not into predictions, either. But aren't you basically saying at this point that the only real value in W/L is judging an entire career in retrospect? If that's the case, I agree. It probably is a very strong indicator of an entire career with few or no exceptions. It's just not a predictor, and it takes a very large sample size to really tell us anything.

Thank you for making my point. Quintana is in the category of "other pitchers".

None of those guys was a really good pitcher. They had good stretches, but baseball isn't a game of short stretches. It's a game of time and repetition. That's how we know that Daniel Murphy isn't Babe Ruth although he looked better than Ruth for much of last year's postseason.

Cain is a guy who came up young, took his lumps, became an elite guy for a few seasons, and then got hurt. It's not some uncommon story. Sheets was as common as they come. A hard throwing guy who couldn't manage a ballgame. Kuroda is just a guy, and a guy who had the benefit of playing on mostly pretty good Yankees teams at that. Or doesn't it work in reverse?

Ahh, but of course, deign is the guy judging pitchers on their W-L record to admit that "losing" W-L pitchers were actually kinda good, how silly of me!

I'm sure you can tell me exactly how awesome Russ Ortiz, Bob Walk and Curt Young are, right? Considering they all hold "winning" records despite none of them leading the league in any meaningful pitching statistc (Ortiz lead the league in walks a couple of times) for their careers, and the trio never finishing higher than 4th in the league for either SO/9, ERA+, FIP, or WAR?

I mean, you'd take those winners over Jose Quintana, Ben Sheets and Matt Cain, right?

When I saw this thread posted, I assumed Chris sale went out and purchased a Timex with Cy Young's image on the face of the watch. A thread about a player possibly winning any award when they are just 1 month into a season is pretty silly.

Oh. My. God.